First off, before anything, the warmest thank you that I can offer to the 20 Something Bloggers Community for voting me Featured Blogger for July! Your votes and support mean the world to me and I am so humbled to be featured on the site. 20sb, you have been so good to me. Thank you is a little word in comparison to the gratitude that I have for each and every one of you.

I am currently curled in three kinds of ways. Curled up in a wicker chair, facing the sunset that stretches its arms out like a well-trained yogi. Fingers curled around the curve of a coffee mug, brewed in a manner that hints at perfection. Curled up in a conversation that I am having with myself.

“This,” I say. “I want so badly to just want this. This Moment. For it to be enough.”

“Ah, so you wish you were a Master of Enough, I see. That is a very tricky thing to be. Rarely do we ever really believe that a moment is enough or that we have enough. We are constantly scrutinizing our lives and what we have in them. It is as if we treat our lives like a dinner plate but there is never quite enough on the plate. The steak could use more cooking. The cupcakes need more icing. Often we are never satisfied with the simple fact that we have a portion. That We Have a Heart That Beats. A Life To Fill.”

“Well it sounds perfect and whimsical when you script it to me like a Hallmark card,” I say, rebutting her once again. “But send anyone out into THIS world with THAT sentiment and they will drown. Because I never hear the word “enough” only the begs and cries for more. More money. More power. More technology. More lines of communication. More networking. More pounds to lose. More skin. More brands to choose.”

“And is that satisfying? To always want more? Would it be better for you if you could just have more and more?”

She is onto something. Oh, she is good. Too Good.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because more would just mean that it was never enough. If I keep adding more it is just giving me less capacity to appreciate what I already have.”

“So if you are not afraid of a desire for more then what keeps you from being a Master of Enough? What are you so afraid of?”

I tell her.

I pluck a fear from my heart like it were a daisy and I give it to her. “I am afraid of silly things. Of having no one at my funeral or always being a face but never a name. But more than anything, I have this fear that at the end of my life someone will hand me a sheet of paper that resembles a cell phone bill. Except instead of “minutes used” it will be “moments wasted.” Moments when I should have been content in the presence of another instead of being absorbed in my email inbox. Moments when I should have just appreciated a person instead of choosing to judge them or criticize them or stay bitter with them. I am petrified those moments will come back to haunt me.”

“Well, can you recall a time when you “used up your minutes” and it was enough?”

I think for a second and I convince myself that a moment such as this does not exist. But then I remember.

I am eight-years-old and the driveway is my very own Broadway stage. I spent hours picking models out of the JCPenney catalog to be my backup dancers for the production of “Annie.” I sashayed and strutted and taught imaginary clothing models how to dance to “Tomorrow.”

And cars whizzed by. Neighbors stared. But I never noticed.

“And why is that?” she asks.

“Because, what would it have mattered? I had everything I needed in that very moment. Passion. Creativity. Backup Dancers. Enough.”

“Well there you go,” She and I. We are getting somewhere. “Someone is always going to tell you that don’t have enough or that you are not doing enough. Drown out the ridicule with your song. Drown out the need for More with all the Enough your heart can hold. Don’t become discouraged when moments get lost in the shuffle, for they surely will, but ask yourself often “Am I living this life right?” No one is Too Good, Too Wise or Too Old for a reality check. Question often if you are using your time well, to marvel at creation or to say thank you to a friend. To Shower Others With Compassion. To Soak in a Bathtub of Simple Things. Sunsets. Cups of coffee. Scented markers. Dirt stains. Jokes on popsicle sticks. Friendship. Memories. People who are willing to make space in their heart for you. Not just for a minute but for forever.”

If I choose to listen to myself tonight, and the wisdom that she gives to me, I will accept that we are all just students to the word Enough. Some of us are scholars but I have yet to encounter a Master of Enough.

No matter our ranking, we should resolve either way. Resolve to delight in the learning. The little life lessons. The starting and restarting. The memories. The moments. The mysteries. That we gather on our way, in search for Enough as a bookmark for our day.

Thank you very much. It is a sweet honor. And I think working on it is all that we can do… as long as we try I think that gives us reason enough to feel like we are doing enough… Could I use the word “enough” again in this comment? Ha. Thank you for stopping by.

Always adore hearing from you Lisa. We can so work on it together ha ha. It is a tricky thing… I feel like I am asking myself a lot more lately “Am I using my time wisely?” And it really helps me to put things in perspective.

I love the life lessons in your blog 🙂 I’m learning a lot of these at the zen temple retreat.. These “Dharma” lessons really are just *life* lessons. But you fabricate them in such an easy way and the writing is never canned or cheesy. Just perfect!

Funny how we are always looking for the next best thing; we always want more. Truth is, what we have is enough.

I’m working on trying to live more simply — to spend less on materialistic things and spend more on memories and adventures. Because at the end of the day, you can replace clothing, dvd’s and iPhones. You can’t replace memories and adventures with new ones. It just won’t be the same.

So true! I am working on doing the exact same thing… I am reading a lot lately on temporal things.. we come into this world with nothing and we leave with nothing… So what I gather from that is that we must make our impact on the world and let that be enough to speak for our little lives.

I love this post, mainly because I think it’s a struggle that a LOT of us struggle with, especially here in America. It reminds me of a sermon my pastor gave a while ago (that I think I’ve referenced here before…hehe) about having IT. We are always searching for and striving for IT. Once we get IT, we discover that it’s not all we thought it would be, so we strive for the next IT. It’s just a cycle of striving, until we learn to be satisfied with what we have. But it’s a hard lesson to learn.

I don’t think you have ever mentioned this before… but I love the idea… The idea of “IT” so good. So spot on! And your pastor is so right, never are we content with having enough because we are constantly being fed this idea that we need something bigger and better and more advanced… Quite annoying if you ask me. I admire my mom so much for that reason.. the woman does not even have a cell phone… That would save me a lot of time, energy and money!

Absolutely beautiful, as always. And it seriously made me SO happy when I saw your pretty face featured as blogger of the month – nobody deserves it more 🙂

I think this is also something we all need to work on, and it’s hard when daily we’re inundated with advertising, acclimatised to the notion that we need to have more, be more, get more, in order to find happiness. D’s sister recently got back from a mission trip to Africa and she told me, these people have nothing, yet they’re the happiest people in the world, and we have so much, and yet we’re still unhappy. Definitely food for thought.

I have noticed that in a lot of impoverished regions… we are blessed with abundance and yet we don’t know how to handle it.. It puzzles me on a daily basis. And thank you for voting love, I am so thankful to be featured like this.

Ditto what Emily said – there’s absolutely zero (that phrasing always seemed oxymoronic to me) doubt in my mind that you deserve it to be a featured blogger!

Again in the themes in which we are similar, I also have struggled, actually do struggle still, with the “enough”. The logic in my head tells me to stop it, that billions of people are in worse positions than I. That the sense of void will be filled in time, to find it in helping others, but this doesn’t salve the feeling of reaching for the next rung that isn’t there.

I wonder if the little things are that which we strive for, if when we reach happiness/enlightment/peace, whatwever you want to call it, all we find is that the little things start occuring more frequently, and that’s what we hope for. We shall see, hmmm?

In the meantime, with only a slight degree of sycophancy and a whole dollop of sincerity – I forget how reading good writing like yours is one of those ‘little things’ to me 🙂 You go, featured blogger!

Wow Stephen… Never really thought about it like that… that as we reach a better sense of peace and happiness the little things start occuring more often.. Or perhaps we start to appreciate them better? Because I know with a sense of happiness the world just seems like a better place to me.. Although this post is about having enough or beng content with the moment I think the “enough” that I tend to struggle with is the challenge to be enough in this world. Does that make sense? I am always hard on myself and often saying “be more! do more!” I wish I could cut that voice out of my head. But thank you very much for referring to my writing as good, that is a better prize than any recognition.

This is so beautiful. Mister and I have tried to really get more minimalist in our lives in the past few years, to stop buying things we don’t need and to stop buying into the idea that we’re not succeeding if we are happy where we are, instead of trying to always grow bigger.

He’s so much better at it than I am, but it’s a wonderful process to go through- I love trying to just be focused on what I really want and trying to let go of the rest. It’s definitely a student thing, not a master thing 🙂

I adore being the student as well.. Always room for improvement and you are right, it can be quite delightful.. I think you and Mister could teach a lot to other people, perhaps you are in the scholar/professor category?